Liberating the literature

Category

Kconnect

…is, I hope, not the light of an oncoming train. I’ve nabbed that line from my favourite band – Half Man Half Biscuit (HMHB) who wrote The Light At The End Of The Tunnel (Is The Light Of An Oncoming Train) a good few years ago! My love for HMHB aside, I keep reflecting on how things seem to be going really well for Trip and I’m desperately hoping we’ve turned a corner. So, why the optimism:

We’re working on the new Freemium version of Trip. What’s going to come out is going to be impressively good and some of the premium upgrades will be great.

We’re involved in the really interesting EU funded project which will be doing some really innovative things. I’ll blog about that more when the final specifications are agreed, but we’ll be looking at making Trip more multi-lingual, we’re going to be improving the Trip Rapid Review system and loads of work around similarity which is useful for the next point.

Relatedness/similarity is looking very useful for what we want to do with regard developing our financial viability. The measures we’re developing will allow us to do all sorts of interesting things, for instance we can highlight a new book that’s useful to a particular clinician, we can highlight a new trial that’s pertinent to an existing systematic review. Many more uses on top of that, but I’ve got to keep some secrets.

I’m starting to realise the value in our clickstream data (helped by two separate teams and soon to be joined by a PhD student as part of the EU project). You only have to look at most of this year’s blog posts to see I’m working hard on this. This can help with the relatedness work but it can do other useful things, such as improving the search results and better predicting new articles that are of use to a Trip user. If our mission is to ensure health professionals get the right evidence to support their care – using clickstream data will make it so much more effective. The advantage of the clickstream data is that it’s Trip’s data to utilise, it’s our IP. It’s at the heart of our future. I actually think it’s this point that’s making me so happy/optimistic.

Lots of other nice bits and bobs e.g. I’ve just been invited to lecture in the USA in Autumn/Fall; I’m part of a large consortium bidding to be a support team for complex reviews; I’m presenting at the wonderful Evidence Live; I’m making headway in my new NHS job (I am lead for Knowledge Mobilisation for Public Health Wales); I’m waiting to hear about a large MRC grant (not optimistic but something to look forward to).